Creative Fundraising Ideas for High School

There are a lot of different reasons for having a school fundraiser and a lot of different ways to run them. 

There are all kinds of school groups that need funding. 

There are cheerleaders, foreign language groups , sports teams and any number of different groups etc.

Having A Successful High School Fundraiser - Nathans Story

When it comes to school fundraisers, there are two schools of thought.  The quick fundraiser that you can do over and over again or the fundraiser that is ongoing and isn't completed until the objective is met.  The second type of fundraiser could last for a long period of time, these fundraisers usually require larger amounts of money.

The quick fundraisers that are quick and easy and don't require very much planning and can be done over and over again, include many different strategies.  One of them is to have a simple raffle where people buy tickets and you put them in a box and draw a winning ticket, at the end of the night and you split the proceeds with the winner.  A good way to do this is to have one of these during a school sporting event.  You can go around the crowd, asking for buyers.  Just make sure to clear it with the school first.

You could also do a bake sale where you have each student bake something and provide it at a sale.  You could do this at a school function or some other date that you desire.  If you go to your sporting events and sell food, you can make some quick money.  Every year my high school raises money their prom by doing this.  They have the juniors rotate nights working concessions on different nights.

I grew up in northern Minnesota, so when football season rolled around, it would get pretty cold.  Well, fundraisers would take advantage of this by setting up a concession stand and selling hot chocolate during the games.  That hot chocolate would sell like hot cakes and they could do this for every home football game, each year.  They have a nice money maker on their hands that they can go back to each year.

I was also a part of a school fundraiser where I sold chocolate bars that were provided by the school.  We sold them for $0.50 each and ended up reaching our goal in under a month.  This was about ten years ago, so I would definitely price it higher today, but you can see that it is possible to raise a lot of money while selling a low priced item.  It helped that they gave us an incentive to sell the most, by offering a cash reward to the person that did so.  Yes, I won the contest.

The equation for a successful school fundraiser is to have a clear plan of what you want to accomplish.  Then to come up with a clear plan for your fundraiser, it may be to provide a product or a service and it may be a one day event or it may be an ongoing process, covering several days.  It is just a process of tracking progress and making adjustments, if need be. 

Give the group clear incentives for putting in more time and effort and execute the plan and have fun!

Whole School Fundraisers

If you need a way to fund an annual event, here's a couple of ideas used by a UK school:-

Lockers - charge a termly sum for students to use lockers.  Issue them with the location of their locker, but encourage them to purchase their own small padlock and key for security.  Whilst this may not seem much, several hundred students paying a small sum each term can add up to several thousand dollars or pounds over a school year.

School Photos - have a professional photographer come in and take photographs of students.  Sell these to parents and family - preferably just in time for the end of the school year as a memento or before Christmas, as they're great for gifts for grandparents .  As profit on these is high and all you need to do is co-ordinate one day of photographs, this can make several thousand for a large school

Sponsored walk or event - this can be a great community event as well as an easy fundraiser. 

Plan a safe route around the local area and block out one day in the school calendar as sponsored walk day - ensure that all the staff plan to come too. 

Give all students sponsor forms in plenty of time before the event.

Make arrangements for medical staff to be on hand, share out cell phone number of key staff to enable emergency services to be called, where necessary. 

Have regular checkpoints around the walk, enabling students who are in physical difficulty to wait to be picked up and returned safely back to school.

Have incentives for people who raise the highest amounts - or classes in each year group that do the best, as this encourages team work.

Take photos and video - so that you can have a celebration day when you see the pictures and find out the total amount raised.

This is great fun, relatively easy to organise and can be a real money spinner once it's established.

Recommended Resources

List of over 100 Fundraising Ideas - more inspiration and tips for ways to raise those much needed funds

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